Publisher: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
Publication Date: 1 May 2002
Language: English
Print length: 224 pages
ISBN-10: 0826450474
ISBN-13: 9780826450470
Book Description
Value pluralism is the view that fundamental human goods, such as liberty, equality and justice, are irreducibly plural and incommensurable. Where such goods conflict, we must make hard choices betweem them, unguided by determinate hierarchies of value such as those proposed by the utilitarians and by Kant. In this book, George Crowder looks at the implications of value pluralism for political theory and in particular for the foundations of liberalism. He argues that while pluralism presents a serious challenge to some of the standard approaches to political theory, it is nontheless compatible with a substantial range of argumants grounded in context. The second focus of the book concerns the arguments put forward by Isaiah Berlin and others showing how pluralism might give us a reason to accept liberalism. Crowder offers an extended attempt to argue for liberalism from a pluralist point of view. He goes on to make a case for liberalism in its more egalitarian and multicultural version, as the political form most hospitable to a mulitplicity of values.
Editorial Reviews
From the Back Cover
Value pluralism is the idea, associated with the late Isaiah Berlin, that fundamental human values are irreducibly plural and incommensurable. Ends like liberty, equality and community are intrinsic goods which can neither be ranked in an absolute hierarchy nor translated into units of a common denominator. If that is true, how can we choose among such values when they come into conflict in particular cases? In particular, what reason is there to justify the value ranking characteristic of liberal democracy, favouring personal autonomy and toleration? Recent commentators have seen value pluralism as undermining the traditional claims of liberalism to universal authority, rendering it at best no more than one political form among others with no greater claim to legitimacy.
Against that view, George Crowder argues that a strong distinctive case for liberalism as a universal project is implied by value pluralism itself. Reflection on the elements of value pluralism yields a set of ethical principles, including respect for universal values, rejection of political utopianism, promotion of value diversity, accommodation of reasonable disagreement, and cultivation of civic virtues. Those principles are best satisfied by a liberal form of politics characterised by a strong commitment to personal autonomy, by policies of moderate redistribution and multiculturalism, and by constitutional restraints on democractic politics. This is the first book-length defence of liberalism on the basis of value pluralism, complementing and extending the work of Berlin and others.
About the Author
George Crowder has taught political philosophy in Britain, the United States, Eastern Europe, and Australasia, and is currently Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.
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